The Lone Median
by DomesticatedWerewolves
Summary: Their minds and personalities and hopes and dreams all churned within him, warping everything he knew. But Alucard's was always the strongest, and he had always been in danger of letting it consume him.


I wish I could say I don't have daydreams like this all the time. Except that would be a lie. A _bad_ lie. I'm completely twisted and its _beautiful_.

This is actually just a small sample of a large story to come. A story I've attempted once before and because my writing was absolute _ass_ before, I wasn't able to bring it to fruition. Because I suck. _Lots and lots_. But anyway, let's call it a prologue of sorts. _Yes, let's do that. _

**Disclaimer:** I own absolutely _dick_. Except the original characters I make up in four seconds with the help of a Pepsi.

**Summary:** Their minds and personalities and hopes and dreams all churned within him, warping everything he knew. But Alucard's was always the strongest, and he had always been in danger of letting it consume him.

**Notes on the Holy Scripture:** This is actually a bit of crossover. There is a central world, with each of our favorite fandoms branching off it, connected in everything. Let's pretend there are a few people with the ability to reach into those other worlds to varying degrees, for better or worse.

Let's also watch Glee while writing this. _That is a fantastic idea_.

xxx

**The Lone Median**

**One-Shot**

xxx

_Dear God oh God_

The gun's barrel felt freezing cold against the hot skin of his forehead. A bead of sweat dripped from his temple, down his cheek, trembled on his chin. He drew in a shaking, shallow breath, afraid any kind of movement might trigger the other man. His knees knocked together. He tried to focus on his bladder and how now would be a _very_ bad time to let it go.

_God please I have never asked anything of you_

He could feel Jordan shivering beside him, pressed to his side. If Noah hadn't been so afraid, he would have reveled in it. But now there was a mugger with a gun that he obviously didn't know how to handle, and Noah was a little too occupied to take joy in such little things.

_Please God _please_ just let me keep myself _this one last time_._

The hot tingling sensation of a change started at his scalp. Always at the top of his head, though he knew of some who said it started in their feet or their eyes. A lot of them said their eyes. But for him the shift began at his scalp, with a tingling like an arm or a leg falling asleep. It crept down his spine and made him shake in a completely different way than what the fear in his heart did. Noah's face began to itch; his gums hurt.

"What the fuck are you doing!" The mugger screeched. The gun was pressed deeper into his head. "What the fuck is up with your eyes!"

"Noah _stop it!_" Jordan screamed.

The world sped up. Noah smiled, like he always did when he was Alucard. To Alucard, guns just added to the fun. Violence was great fun. He wanted to bleed, make someone else bleed. Drink it all in. The tingling spread, from his head to the tips of his fingers and toes. It was in his heart, which beat and sputtered and finally stopped. He let out one last exhale and red cloaked him.

Suddenly facing a man nearly a foot taller than the old one, the mugger fired his gun. Jordan's scream was drowned out by it. She scuttled away from the stranger she had been pressed against, her eyes wide with fear. Blood poured from his black suit; his veins pinched, his throat ached. Bloodlust rose inside him.

_Oh no not now not with her here oh God please no I_

The world slowly slipped away.

xxx

It had begun when he had been thirteen. Really passionate about something. An old comic book series he found in his attic. The pages had been yellow and crisp at the edges, and the spines were faded and wrinkled. At least fifty years old. Older than his parents. Older than _anything. _At least, to a young teen.

When he opened them, they had crackled pleasantly. They smelled musty and had made him gag at first, but a peek at the art inside had made him want to read more. He let them air out on the back deck for a while, until the summer wind had carried most of the dust away. His father chuckled as he carried the ten little books inside.

"Where did you find those old things?" he had asked.

"Places."

Noah locked himself in his room and poured over the comics. He had felt a strange compulsion to do so, _more_ than just seeing it to its end. With each page he became more attached to the characters, felt more powerful with the knowledge. At night the bindings called to him, flashing _Hellsing_ in white. When he thought about it, his scalp tingled.

One night, while reading through the series for the fifth or sixth or maybe the tenth, the tingling got to the point of being irritating. Noah propped the book open on his lap and rubbed his head. The irritation became an itch. He scratched. The itch turned to something that was almost pain and sent a shudder through him.

Suddenly there _was_ pain, as if his scalp was on fire. Noah gritted his teeth and pressed his palms to his head. He rolled out of bed and bolted for the bathroom. The upstairs smelled like peppers; whatever his mother was making for dinner was going to be done soon. His socks slipped on the hardwood floor and he almost fell. With his clothes still on he turned on the shower and stood under the icy water, trying to will the burning in his scalp away.

Trembling, Noah sat on the edge of the bath, his head bent over under the water, still in considerable pain. Water dripped from his nose. His heart was racing, and he tried to still it, convinced that it was causing the pain. What scared him the most was what he was thinking about; visions of things he had only seen in black and white, suddenly in color. Some things he had never seen. Blood and fire and _oh it was wonderful_.

The pain and fear and grotesqueness came to a sudden culmination and Noah vomited into the bathtub. The shower started to wash it away. The pain faded away. His hair, which had always been short, was plastered to his forehead and eyelids. His shirt was soaked at the shoulders. Noah spun on the edge of the bath so he could see the mirror and the black hair on his head.

It started at the scalp.

The black vanished before his hair could dry completely. Noah tried to forget about it. He went downstairs when his mother called for dinner, a new shirt on, and ate like he usually did. The peppers smelled nice and tasted just as good. The entire time he was terrified that the black would creep back into his hair and the visions would return.

But they didn't. Noah finished his dinner and put his plate in the sink and ran back upstairs. He stared at the comics on his bed, one still open and on the floor from when he ran. He still felt the compulsion to read and read until the world ended, but now it frightened him.

He boxed the books up and put them back in the attic and tried to forget they ever existed. It worked for a little while; Noah thought about them, but the tingling didn't return for months. Yes, he thought about them _a lot_ and maybe sometimes he had dreams of blood and hell-on-earth and woke up sweating with a grin on his face, but there was no tingling. No more black in his hair.

One night Noah's dreams were almost real to him. He tossed and turned and in his mind he was watching London burn to the ground. He was fighting someone and the rush inside him was like nothing he had ever felt before. Someone worthy someone almost like _That Man,_ except he had no idea who _That Man_ was. In the real world his physical body curled in a tight ball and the itch came back. Inside his head there was a bayonet in his gut and it overshadowed the itch, but it was there and it was spreading to his eyes and toes.

He woke up with a sudden knowledge that his mother was in the room. He tucked himself into a tighter ball, trembling. The itch was just starting to fade from the balls of his feet, and he knew something horrible had happened. He was hot and sweating and his clothing felt thick and unfamiliar. His heart thundered. Instead of the thin t-shirt he had been wearing the night before, he was in that suit and _oh god that was a coat_. _And there were gloves_.

"Noah?" His mother tugged at the blankets and Noah clung harder to them. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah." Noah pressed his face into the mattress at the sound of his voice. "My throat hurts. A little."

His mother fell silent for a moment. Noah stifled a moan at the fact that he could hear her heartbeat, still there, still staring at the lump in the bed. He could taste her suspicion on the back of his tongue. "I'm still going to school," he muttered, muffling his voice in the sheets. It didn't help.

"…alright. I'll leave out some cough syrup and juice before I leave." His mother walked away and he heard each step and the click of the door closing all the way.

As soon as his mother's feet hit the bottom step, Noah threw back the covers and stumbled out of bed. The sudden height stunned him, and before he could take a single step, he tripped over his own legs and hit the floor on his hands and knees. The pain made him grunt and bow his head. The symbols on his gloves blurred.

His legs were weak. Noah crawled over to the door and listened intently, trying not to look at his hands or think too hard about what was happening. When he was sure his mother was still downstairs and everyone else had gone to school or work, he used his dresser to pull himself up. He had to bend down to look into the mirror mounted on his wall.

It was impossible. Noah no longer looked like an almost fourteen year old with an admittedly sunken chest and slightly sickly appearance, but rather –

Noah let out a shaking exhale and scrubbed a hand down his face, his new face, his unfamiliar and yet _so very familiar_ face. He shook, fear filling him. But the fear also disgusted him a little, the first of many emotions that he was sure weren't really his. It made his stomach drop a little, but he really didn't think anything of it at the time. He was too busy worrying about the fact that he was a six foot tall vampire today, when he had been sure he had been a five-five teenager the night before.

"I'm dreaming," Noah muttered, and bodily flinched at the sound of his voice. "This isn't real." He bit his lip, like he usually did when he wanted to wake up, and he was actually surprised when a row of fangs drew blood. It poured down his chin and stained the suit's chest in a way that had never been done in the comic, not even when London had been full of it.

The shock and pain sent another wave of itch through him, so intense and so quick that it combined with the drastic height change and his knees buckled again. Nausea ripped through him and Noah thought he was going to throw up. And then the itch came again and the change rushed over him. The sensations and physical toil made him retch violently, bent over and shivering and sweaty.

"Fuck," Noah gasped, his stomach heaved, his back arched. "Fuck fuck!"

He banged a fist against the floor, but it did not even dent the wood. He had Alucard's face and body but his insides were still Noah, still human, which explained his beating heart and lack of power. But no matter, his mother still heard all the bangs of him falling and abusing the hardwood. And if she came up and found a strange man in her son's bedroom, Noah didn't know how she would react. _He_ didn't know how to react.

He heard her coming back up the stairs. "Noah, are you alright!"

The door. _Oh God the door_. His boots squealed on the floor as he bolted for it, a little faster than he thought he could, maybe because of Alucard's height, maybe because he wasn't totally human on the inside. But he made it to the doorknob before his mother, and he wrapped both hands around it. The size of his new hands astounded him; he could cover the doorknob with one and two just made it impossible for his mother to even make the door budge.

"Noah let me in!" his mother was starting to sound as hysterical as he felt. "Open the door _right now_!"

Noah pressed himself against the doorway, even though his mother wasn't even making the door shake. "No no no nonono_no_," he whispered, trying to figure out a way to turn back.

A sharp inhale. Noah ran a tongue over his new fangs and thought about his blunt human teeth. His new strength kept the door closed, but all he wanted was his thin, feeble muscles. He thought of his habit of releasing a burst of air instead of a real laugh when he had been surprised by a good joke. The growing pains he still got at night. As soon as the tingling started again, he continued focusing on _Noah Noah_.

His mother was able to push the door open. She was near tears and she grabbed him and shook his little fourteen year old body. "Don't scare me like that!" she wailed, her lips were pressed together into nothingness. "I thought you…I don't know what I thought but it was something horrible!"

"It was nothing horrible, mom," Noah mumbled into her shoulder. The itch was just now fading away from the bottom of his feet.

_Nothing horrible at all_.

xxx

Of course he learned to control it. Anyone would. Noah didn't know what it really was, but he liked to think of it as shapeshifting, except when he tried to do it with someone outside of the comic, he wasn't able to.

"Yeah, you're like one of us." Finn liked to say that a lot. _Us_. There were others, each _specializing_ in something different. He said that a lot too. "You're the first _Hellsing_ I've seen in a while, too. Never an Alucard, though. He's a tough one. You might want to be careful."

But Noah's ego was already twisted by his words and the three complete changes he had already preformed. Alucard was in there already. Noah changed recklessly, ignoring the advice from other specializers, who always told him to spread his shifts apart. Even when Finn showed him what happened to those who had an anti-hero or a villain or even a radically different bond (oh the _screams _the screamsand _laughter_), Noah thought he was above it because to Alucard he was above _everything._

Three years and ten shifts later, Alucard stopped simply sitting inside of him and reared his head and bared his fangs.

Noah had successfully hidden his talent from his family and friends. Sometimes they questioned why he had decided to grow his hair a little longer, or where his overwhelmingly strong confidence had come from, but they never suspected what he could do. They questioned who he decided to hang out with, but he never seemed to get into any trouble so they left him be.

He did notice that sometimes he did not really feel like Noah. When he was Alucard, he knew it was normal to feel different. But it was possible to keep those emotions under control, and they always went away when he changed back to Noah. But lately, those emotions had been creeping into the back of his mind. He would be in class and it would be a voice in his head.

_Noah_

_Noah did you think that you could forget me?_

_Put on my face and get away with it?_

_I'm always here, Noah. _I'm always here_. _

A twitch and a shake and maybe a growl, and Noah could dispel the voice with ease. But it came back, with even more frequency, until sometimes he would get so caught up in keeping himself in control that he would only come back to the real world when the bell rang to dismiss class. But he didn't think too hard about it – so what if he was experiencing the same symptoms that the others had? So what that he had only shifted eleven times, when Finn had said that it usually took fifty or so shifts to really make the bond start blurring.

And one day, several weeks after his last change, as he and a friend were walking to lunch, a fight broke out right in front of them. Two boys started to push and shove and then a punch was thrown. Someone's nose started to bleed. Noah's eyes dilated and he staggered a little; his friend caught him around the arm. His heart thundered and suddenly stopped.

"Noah, what's wrong?" Jack asked.

_I've died holy shit fuck no not the itch _not now goddammit. Noah inhaled and couldn't hold the breath in. His chest, which was still a little sunken, quivered. His heart didn't beat and spider webs of blackness teased his vision. He felt lightheaded and wavered and would have fallen if not for Jack. His mouth filled with cold saliva. He twitched at the sound of someone getting punched in the jaw. Alucard wanted to join in and see if any of them would fight back; in this world, even a little fistfight was something to celebrate and revel in.

Just when he thought he was sure that the feeling was fading away and he was almost ready to get back on his feet and hide in the bathroom until his heart started again, the world went black for a split second. Noah couldn't see but he could feel his body moving, taking a step or two forward, his right fist coming forward and punching one of the fighters across the jaw. He felt the student's jaw break in two places.

When Noah's sight returned and he regained the use of his body, he was sitting in the guidance office and his knuckles hurt.

"I would prefer it if you cut the attitude, Noah," the counselor said over steepled fingers. "What you did was serious."

Noah gave one last shake to dislodge Alucard. The vampire was still there, but the exertion of whatever he had done had drained him, and Noah felt more like himself than he had in months. He took a deep, satisfying breath and tried to relax.

"I don't know what come over me," Noah muttered.

_It's who _took over_ me._

xxx

No more shifts. Finn chastised him for hours when Noah called after school. "You _know_ how powerful he is, Noah. You've practically _been there_. I've seen it happen a million times. Actually, thirty-four times, but you know what I mean. Anyway, they'll have a bond that's too strong for them and their character will take over." A sigh sent static into Noah's ear. "You know that I would have to kill you if Alucard took over. Even if you are still in there, I'll have to kill you when you come back."

"I know." Noah had taken to holding the phone with one hand and pressing it to the opposite ear. "I've got him under control. I won't shift unless I have to."

"And really, that shouldn't be much. How much could you ever _need_ Alucard? Right, Noah?"

"Sure." Noah hung up rather rudely; he'd admit it. Already the urge to change was over him, twisting his stomach and heart. He felt anxious, and he knew the only way to relieve it was to change and experience Alucard's bottomless confidence. Even though Alucard was the reason he shouldn't change. _I think I just hit a wall in my logic. No shifting. _

He tried to keep himself from changing. For the first few months, it was hard. He had to return the comics to their place in the attic and could never let himself sink too far in his own thoughts. He couldn't allow himself to get lost in his own thoughts, because somewhere in there, Alucard waited, ready to coax a change, a shift. He grinned in the back of Noah's head, baring fangs, ready to take advantage of Noah at any sign of weakness.

But as time went on, it grew easier to forget about Alucard. It wasn't like the first time he tried to ignore it; this time he knew what was going on, he knew how to control it. He threw himself into school and brought his grades up from the mediocrity that a regular shift into Alucard's personality had brought (it wasn't that Alucard was stupid; he was just a lazy fuck).

He cut his hair again and started hanging out with more than just the few other specialists who lived in a town a half hour away. He kept up contact with Finn only to let him know that Alucard wasn't running around downtown. Most days he felt like himself, Noah through and through; though sometimes, while on the edge of a deep sleep, or if he forgot and started daydreaming in class, the voice in the back of his head would come back.

_Noah remember the blood don't you miss the blood and the _power_ Noah. _

A growl would rise in his throat and it would die when he either fell asleep or his teacher called him out on staring at the ceiling for the better part of an hour. He would forget the voice. His stomach would twist and maybe his heart slowed a little, but he thought nothing of it because he was just _Noah, nothing weird here_.

He tried to change into someone different. Noah reasoned that, maybe, he could get rid of the urge and the voices. He tried other characters in the comic, hoping that maybe being a human character would be easier than being an Alucard. There were so few humans in the comic though, that all he could do was attempt Pip.

"I've heard of it happening," Finn said. "You know Kathy? She can do the entire cast of her specialty. But she's a rare example, and you shouldn't get your hopes up. And remember to _be careful_."

Noah was not one of the few specialists who could bond with more than one character. He started his shift with Pip in mind, and when the tingling in his scalp began he had the feeling that this would work out. After Alucard, Pip would be so much easier to control. He could shift more, like Finn, like anyone else with an easy bond, and get rid of the urge and finish those college applications.

But then a sharp jolt of pain shot up his spine, arching it and making Noah shriek. He twisted in agony, his knees hitting the floor; but that was secondary to the blinding pain in his back that was spreading. It struck his heart and stopped it and his scream turned breathless.

The simple, almost peaceful image he had in his head turned bloody. The sound of a battlefield roared in his ears. A horse screamed and someone was shouting and someone was laughing. Noah was the one laughing, laughing so hard that tears of pain and mirth poured down his cheeks. His fingers curled and he writhed on the floor. Bile rose in his throat and the bones of his face crackled.

The change was fast and violent. His gums bled and his eyes changed color so fast that for a split second even the whites were a swirling red. For one moment the change wasn't complete, and he was still Noah, swimming in Alucard's clothing, with all of Alucard's powers. But then, with a roar, Alucard was there, and the world swam and wavered. Noah screamed in frustration and pain.

Alucard was trying to steal control. Black curled around his eyes, and Noah couldn't tell if it was real or because he was slowly losing. His head jerked a little. For one moment they shared the body, Alucard wedging himself in along with Noah, who was desperately trying to overpower him and keep him from _blood death kill eat kill eat come on Noah think of the power the taste rule with me Noah_.

With a huge effort, Noah pushed Alucard out of his body. The vampire growled as he retreated back to wherever he had come from, never turning his back on Noah. Sinking to the floor, Noah decided that the danger had passed. He might as well take his time changing back.

xxx

Noah had never been a social person, and when his parents said that he would not be commuting to college, but living on campus, he had to struggle to keep himself from imagining all of the horrible things that could happen in a dorm.

"You're too antisocial," his father said when Noah tried to argue this decision. "I lived in a dorm when I went to college. It's not that bad."

A chuckle came from inside the back reaches of his mind while he was packing. Noah ignored it and continued folding t-shirts. He started to become hyperaware of his own heartbeat and the blood pumping through his head; it rushed through his ears and deafened him. His vision blurred momentarily, and in between the thumps of blood he heard Alucard whispering.

Noah steeled himself against the whispers of _the blood is the life_ and counted out ten rolled-up pairs of socks. He did not know where Alucard came from, why his body and powers and face were available to him, why any of them could do what they did. Why he wasn't in his own world was a mystery, and Noah wished he had never come into this one.

Move in day was awkward, but Noah managed through it. His roommate was a shut-in, like himself, with an obsession with metaphysical poetry and a fluency in German. Alucard was inside him when they met for the first time, like Noah's body was a suit of armor, like their bodies were superimposed over each other, and he forced Noah's shoulders up in an aggressive hunch at the mention of _Germany_. Alucard obviously missed his world.

Noah wished Alucard would just go back and leave him alone.

The first night was agony. His roommate did not snore – he slept silently – but others in the complex didn't. He could hear them all snoring, snorting, gulping, hiccupping, whispering and giggling to their friends, the occasional grunt; Alucard was starting to blend with him, they shared the same hearing. He tossed and turned, his mattress's old springs squeaking, growling irately as each hour passed.

Eventually he did sleep, as the orange slice of dawn was just beginning to come up over the sprawl of houses that he could see outside his dorm window.

He had his first day of classes that morning, three hours after he had started to dream. He stumbled across campus to his first class on his first ever day of college, and immediately got lost.

That was when he met Jordan, wandering around the building where his first class should have been. He bumped into her, getting a strong whiff of the shampoo that still clung to her brown hair. His high school years had been spent in someone else's skin, away from kids his own age. She looked up at him and had blue eyes.

He thought she was beautiful. Alucard whispered to kill her and eat her beating heart.

"I'm sorry," Noah mumbled, getting to his feet. After that one moment of eye contact he looked away, at his sneakers. He didn't know why he asked her, but he figured that he couldn't screw up his first class on his first day. "Do you know where room two thirty-four is?"

Her face lit up. Noah would eventually find out that Jordan was the type of person who just loved helping people. "That's my class!"

They were both psychology majors. He didn't have a lot of spending money, so their first date was spent in her dorm room, watching a rented movie and sharing a pint of ice cream. Noah had the constant feeling that Alucard was always there, but as a separate being. Around Jordan, he was Noah and Alucard was Alucard. He wasn't sure where his infatuation began to meld with the desire to be his own entity, but he didn't care. Jordan's companionship was invaluable; she was a good person and he liked to be around her and _ha-fuckity-ha_ _Alucard did not_.

It was his first relationship. His first contact with a girl, really. His first kiss caused a storm of something inside him; she tasted like the birthday cake she had been eating. But there was the tint of blood on the back of his tongue, as if Alucard was sharing in on the taste of her mouth and the wriggling flat expanse of her tongue. Could he feel the concave top of her mouth? Gloved fingers tangled in her hair. His snakelike tongue was down her throat.

She didn't seem to notice the cold, dead muscle in her mouth. Maybe she was in to it.

After that first kiss, Noah became paranoid that, while most of the time he was aware of himself, maybe Alucard was still watching. Always watching. Waiting to pounce at an opportune moment, when he was at his weakest. Which was always with Jordan. He let everything down with her.

The first kiss was in October, on his birthday, and he found that he had told her everything around Christmas. They lay in his bed on the last day of classes for that semester. The lights were off. The heating was on but it wasn't doing much. The room was still cold enough to make his fingers stiff despite sheets and two thick blankets, so he pressed them against her stomach. She sucked in a sharp gasp and giggled, pressing her nose into his neck, flicking her tongue against it. Their legs were intertwined. It was snowing and they had the lights in the room on even though it was winter-bright outside.

He had told her everything. She was dozing when he whispered into her ear. "I'm a shapeshifter."

When Jordan grinned, her nose wrinkled a little. It was subdued because she was right on the edge of sleep. It had been a long day, and they would be studying late for the rest of the week. Why not sleep? "Really?" She thought he was joking.

Noah waited until her breathing was even and slow. "Really." He wrapped long arms around her, linked gloved fingers on the other side of her shoulder. He was too tall for the extra-long mattress.

xxx

Ugh, bad ending. Though I do kind of like it. I have a love/hate relationship with it. I took it out on a nice date, a walk on the beach, dinner and coffee. But now I won't call it or answer its texts. I'm making eyes at its hot sister.

But _holy hell_ this was long. And as I said before, it is only the prologue to a much larger story.

A larger story that's mostly Yugioh. Um…sorry. 8C


End file.
